Atlanta United’s dramatic fall from grace may have dampened enthusiasm for most things associated with the club.
But fans don’t have to look very far to find a team enjoying an equally-steep rise.
Atlanta United 2 recently concluded by a wide margin their best regular season ever, finishing third in MLS NEXT Pro’s Eastern Conference on 48 points. As a reward for getting a top-four seed, the 2s got to pick their first-round opponent and will host seventh-seeded CT United in their first-ever playoff match tonight.
Atlanta came agonizingly close to the playoffs last season, finishing just a point and two places below the line, the first time they’d ever come anywhere near in MLS NEXT Pro or the USL Championship. Coming so close to a goal that had always seemed so distant finally gave the team tangible progress to build upon this season.
But the speed and degree at which the club has improved has been nothing short of remarkable. The 2s’ ascent began in the middle of last season and was made possible primarily by one man. When head coach Steve Cooke left the club to join Lexington SC last July, assistant Jose Silva took the interim job. Silva injected new life into a side that had previously only experienced mediocrity at best, guiding Atlanta to six wins, all in regulation, in his 12 matches in charge to put them within a whisker of the playoffs after they had only won five of their first 16 and just three in regulation under Cooke.
Atlanta made the easy decision to remove Silva’s interim tag at season’s end, and the Spaniard hasn’t looked back in his first full season at the helm. He led the 2s to 15 wins this season, all but one in regulation, and has taken the club to heights that had been little more than fantasy for their entire existence before his appointment.
Silva has clearly proven he is the right coach for this team, but the players also deserve tremendous credit for reversing the club’s fortune. That’s been led by a player who burst onto the scene even more emphatically than Silva. Arif Kovac saw less than half an hour of action across three matches for the 2s last season and scored just a single goal, but he exploded with a club-record 20 goals to win the Golden Boot and match the second-highest tally in league history. Those 20 goals were nearly a third of the team’s total of 62, second most in the league. New arrival Cameron Dunbar assisted 13 of those 62 goals, and scored nine of his own, to equal a league record and take home the Playmaker of the Year Award. Atlanta’s defense wasn’t particularly impressive as a unit, ranking midtable with 46 goals conceded, but Dominik Chong Qui’s standout individual performances made him a finalist for Defender of the Year and landed him Atlanta’s joint-league-leading third Best XI selection alongside Kovac and Dunbar.
Atlanta may appear to have a massive advantage playing the seventh seed, but tonight’s contest isn’t nearly as big a mismatch as it may seem on paper. In fact, CT United, who clinched the playoff spot Atlanta spent nearly a decade aiming for in vain in their debut campaign, have had an eerily similar season to Atlanta. The playoff race in the East was so tight that the Coywolves finished just two points behind Atlanta, and they ranked right behind the 2s in the scoring charts with 59 goals. Like Atlanta, they relied on a talisman for the biggest portion of those goals as Barnabás Tanyi’s 16 strikes were third-best in the league. Their defense was similarly average with 52 goals conceded, but they also had one standout defender in Andre Applewhaite, who received an honorable mention for the Best XI.
The one area where these two teams have clear separation is in head-to-head results. The two sides have only met once before, but that one meeting was a 4-1 Atlanta rout last month that put the 2s within touching distance of the playoffs. In fairness, the balance of play was nowhere near as lopsided as that score would suggest, but poor clearances, momentum-stopping offside calls, multiple own goals and a Tanyi red card just shy of an hour in doomed Connecticut in a match they could’ve won without those unforced errors. Tanyi comes into this match in red-hot form after scoring a hat trick on a Decision Day in which Kovac also found the back of the net, and both teams will need to have their main men meet the moment and to avoid careless mistakes like the ones Connecticut made in the previous clash because there’s very little to separate the two sides in this historic match.
How to Watch Atlanta United 2 vs. CT United FC
Venue: Children’s Healthcare of Atlanta Training Ground, Marietta, GA
Kickoff Time:Â Friday, October 16th, 6 PM ET
Available TV/Streaming:Â YouTube, MLSNEXTPro.com, OneFootball App
Available Radio: Soccer Down Here